Once upon a time, I was a political scientist. Briefly and not at all one of consequence, but published as embarrassed as I am by its quality now. Back in those days I was a jet engine, convinced that I could change the world and with a coterie of supporters that believed the same. It really did feel like the world was mine for the taking.

So why am I an IT guy now, spending my days wallowing in mild hedonism spending my shifts on youtube and tvtropes? Well, there are a couple different things that happened that made me very jaded with human nature while also making me a better political scientist, and this all happened around 2016-2017. You can probably guess a few of them.

Ultimately though, it feels as if the world has become a meaner, cruder place. Perhaps the dregs and the pinnacle were always one and the same, but I find myself disgusted with the very nature of all political groups. Whether they are imperialist, progressive, anarchist, or otherwise, there is a trend in place to adopt a certain amount of solipsism and to dismiss the cognitive understanding of others. This is a side effect of the current state of information entropy that we are all being subjected to, but there seems to be absolutely no discussion on information literacy in any group, as it is framed as anything between ideological impurity to learned propaganda to "being woke" or a hundred other labels that all mean the same thing: failure to conform.

One thing I was always taught is that a good leader is a good follower. Someone who knows what the mission is and keeps people on track. To know the mission and to trust your people and know when to interject and when to let them do their thing.

But as the cultural situation has emphasized fear again and again, everyone settles into an old fallacy: that being at war means you follow orders. And when it comes down to it, we are very much at war. Not simply fascist and antifascist, conservative and progressive, but one of the values of cognitive observation and how it is interpreted. And currently, there is no champion of complicated nuance. Currently, every single major group has chosen to embrace a philosophy of uniform obedience to simple principles with no concern for why other principles may exist.

This condition above all else is what enables a culture of violence, of all kinds. American culture has always been one that encourages simple and direct solutions to all problems, but that principle has enabled a lack of self reflection on the part of every major philosophy, and if we will not speak to each other with the assumption that another experience has happened and has resulted in feelings that are felt, we cannot analyze the feelings nor the experiences nor the resulting worldview, let alone the resulting cultural and political intertwinement.

So that's where I stand on it. Obviously I am unhappy with the recent American election, and obviously the choices available were not the best. But the choices available are a reflection of the current American consciousness, and that consciousness has not seen a real self-reflection, nor will it.

I spent a great deal of my life changing myself to be what I thought would be a good leader: self-reflective, self-critical, and self-correcting. However, these qualities did more to make me a target for those who excelled at something that I cannot excel at by my very nature: conformity. And ultimately, my inherent deviant nature has made it difficult for me to understand how to follow, and a good leader should be a good follower.

In the world of IT, I spend my days reading and watching, while doing a job that I have always done since I was a child growing up on the doorstep of Silicon Valley. A life of household chores in exchange for a wage that allows me my creature comforts and little more.

But of course, I cannot separate myself from the world. I once again find myself worried about the rising shores of ignorance, weaponized at a scale hitherto unthinkable. Being but one Cob though, my options seem rather limited.

So for now, I will have to do what I despise others doing: tune out.